Ash in London action
Media Release
May 14, 2005

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Los Angeles-based Indian filmmaker Jag Mundhra is back to doing what, in his own words, he likes the best – making an issue-related film about a woman of substance. Provoked, an Aishwarya Rai-Naveen Andrews-Miranda Richardson-Nandita Das starrer that is currently shooting in London relates the real-life story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who killed her abusive husband, was convicted and incarcerated and then, following a long legal struggle, is exonerated.

“The film,” reveals Mundhra, in Cannes for just a single day, “has been in the works for a week now. It will be completed in six weeks.”

Based on the book, Circle of Light, co-authored by Ahluwalia herself, the film has Aishwarya playing the protagonist, with Nandita essaying the role of a social activist who helped the former in her fight to vindicate herself.

Andrews plays the husband that she was compelled to eliminate from her life – and the world. Aishwarya, who, according to Mundhra, “is doing a fantastic job”, walked into the film quite by chance.

The producer happened to meet her at a social gathering during the London shoot of Paul Mayeda Berges’ Mistress of Spices. The two got talking and when Aishwarya realized what Provoked was all about she expressed a desire to be a part of it.

“I met her and everything quickly fell into place,” says Mundhra.

“Aishwarya asked me whether I could wrap up the film in six weeks. I told her I finish all my films in six weeks,” recalls the director.

He could afford to be cocky. Jag Mundhra has completed as many as three films in the past year – Backwaters, Natasha and Private Moments, screened in the Cannes Film Market on the second evening of the festival. Provoked will complete a trilogy of women’s films for Mundhra, Kamla and Bawander being the first two. Mundhra describes his next release, Private Moments, as a sexual fantasy.

“Sex in the City meets The Red Shoe Diaries in London,” he wisecracks.

Remind him of the fact that he once did specialize in adult entertainment and he defends himself spiritedly.

“That image was a creation of the media. People forgot that my second film was Kamla,” he says.

“I love making films like Kamla, Bawander and Provoked.” The fact that he has gathered experience, improved as a filmmaker, become savvier at marketing his work and understands the business better helps no end, confesses Mundhra.

“I lost a lot of money with Kamla and faced a major financial crisis. The erotic films that I then made in the US got me out of the red.” Bawander, however, wasn’t a commercial washout.

“It worked because by now I knew how to position a film like Bawander,” Mundhra explains. In an interesting reversal of roles in Provoked, Mundhra has cast Nandita as “a chain-smoking, hard drinking social activist who lives life on her own terms”.

Nandita had played the victim in Bawander. In Provoked, she dons the garb of saviour. Nandita, busy with her jury duties in Cannes, will head straight for London after the festival for the Provoked shoot.

Aishwarya, in Cannes as L’Oreal’s brand ambassador who has already put in two red carpet appearances – one on the opening night followed by one the next evening before the screening of Woody Allen’s first film ever to be shot entirely in London, Match Point – heads back to the sets of Provoked after a two-day break.

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